Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that children with rights to British citizenship can secure their citizenship rights where hostile British or settled fathers are unwilling to support their child's registration or passport applications.

The Home Office regularly engages with local authorities to support them in ensuring that children in local authority care, who are not already British citizens, can make an appropriate application for registration for citizenship. Children in local authority care are not required to pay an application fee when applying for registration as a British citizen.

In most cases, local authorities have access to the information needed to establish the citizenship rights and apply for registration for children in their care. Where there are evidence gaps, the Home Office will assist any applicant by checking information held in its records to confirm a claim.

Following the implementation of the British Nationality Act 1981, a range of explanatory material was prepared to support those affected by changes made by the Act. This material has been maintained and now forms part of the content of the relevant GOV.UK pages. The Home Office maintains published customer guidance for every British citizenship and nationality route, and also provides a British nationality status confirmation service.